make-believe

I used to believe…

There were these old trees in the playground at my school and in kindy I thought there were mice living in them, and the knotholes were doors. Then i changed schools, and there weren't any trees, so i believed they ran around in the walls and I used to talk to them through a missing brick.

I used to believe…

When I was young, a neighbor kid told me that the seeds on the inside of persimmons were goblin eggs and if you opened one up the seeds would grow into goblins that would hide in your bedroom! I concentrated all year to not run over them with my bike.

I used to believe…

My parents used to tell my brother and I that if we were bad around Christmas time, that Santa would send his elves to take away the Christmas tree and that the elves checked on us during the night from outside our bedroom windows. To make it more believable, my dad made some scrapings down the snow covered sidewalk and made little mitten prints on the outside of our frosted bedroom windows, and told us the next morning that he saw the elves dragging the neighbor kids's Christmas tree down the sidewalk and that he also saw them come and check on us, then proceeded to show us the drag marks and the mitten prints - we were both mortified and we never did dare go to the neighbor's house to see if the tree was really gone or not for fear of being associated with "bad" kids in Santa's eyes!

I truly believed in the Tooth Fairy as a child. When I would lose a tooth, I would write a heartfelt plea on paper begging the Tooth Fairy to spend the night. I would write this letter and put it in one of those plastic medicine bottles and put it under my pillow. I wanted to see what she looked like when I woke up. She never spent the night --I guess she was just too busy!

I used to believe…

As a child I believed that if my feet or any part of me poked over the edge of the bed at night evil creatures would eat that bit of me. I also believed that witches ate your ears, so wrapped a blanket around my head. I am 31 now and still sleep in a tight ball with head and feet covered. Scary!

i used to think that santa was real every night i would leave food and drink out in the morning it was not there.one year i made a mark in the carrot to see if my parants had put it back, because they do not eat raw carrots. i checked the carrot basket in the morning and it was there that proved he was not real.

I used to believe…

When I was little my sister convinced me that she was a vampire and that during the night she was going to suck out all my blood. After losing a few nights of sleep, I decided to pack the underside of my pillow with garlic cloves so she wouldn't suck out my blood. My mom couldn't figure out where all her garlic went till she caught the scent coming from our bedroom. Of course my sister was punished and I gloated.

I also used to believe that loud singing scared away ghosts and other assorted bogeymen. This always got me in trouble during late night visits to the bathroom.

Still laughing over the vampire's aversion to gingham...

I used to believe…

My husband's family lives in West Virgina and they do a lot of deer hunting there. His uncle shot a pretty big buck and had the head stuffed and mounted. On Christmas Eve, he took a bit of aluminum foil, colored it red and stuck it to the bucks nose. He then called all the kids in and told them he shot Rudolph! My husband and his cousins were devastated. What a rotten old bastard!

I used to believe…

When my god-daughter learned that the tooth fairy left money in exchange for teeth, she mysteriously lost seven in a two week period. None of them were loose!

One from my son...

When my 10 year old son lost a tooth a couple of days ago, I scrawled the usual flowery, loopy-lettered note on an envelope from the tooth fairy scattered with tiny, intricate footprints and glitter with a crisp dollar bill tucked inside. The next morning he sat me down for a serious 'boy-to-mom' talk. He told me not to get upset, but there was no such thing as the tooth fairy, santa claus, the easter bunny, ect. and that his grandmother (my mother) had told him two years ago. He had decided to wait till I was thirty to tell me because then I would be old enough to handle 'the truth'. LOL! I played it up and acted shocked and he spent the rest of the day randomly rubbing my back and telling me everything would be okay because we wouldn't tell his father or baby sister. What a sweet little boy!

I used to pretend that I was a twin named Patricia and my twin sister was named Beatrice (these were the names of two twin girls who went to my school.) In my imaginary family I had lots of younger siblings, including: Emily, the baby, Polly, Jonathan, Mary, who was a girl from school, and Dan, my real brother. I had two older siblings, Susan and Michael. I would always pretend that I had long golden hair and I was the prettiest one in the family and, well, you get the picture.

I used to believe…

As a child, I believed that there was a monster under my bed but if I dropped candy on the floor on the opposite side that I got out on that he wouldn't see me as I leapt from the bed across the room! My Mom always wondered why there was candy on the floor on that side of the room!!!

I used to believe…

When I was little my mother used to tell me to shut my eyes so "the Sandman" could put sand in them, when she was putting me to bed, I used to be terrified because to me the Sandman was what we nowadays call a "grey" or "tan" alien, and he didn't put sand in my eyes, he stuck a glass rod up my nose for some reason. This image stayed with me for years and years, and even now in my late 30's if I hear someone mention the Sandman it gives me the heebeegeebees

I used to believe…

When i was very little - maybe 6 - my parents had a halloween party for me and all my little friends. At the end of the evening she got us all together and showed us an enormous bucket of water, saying she was going to make a spell to turn us all into frogs. She let us stir the water then sent us off to find plastic bugs she had hidden around the house. When we were all back together she collected the bugs, threw them in the potion and gave it a stir. She then picked up the heavy bucket full of water, counted to 5 and threw it all over us cringing kids. Instead of getting wet we found ourselves showered with confetti. My friends (and i ) truely believed that my mum could do magic!

I used to believe…

Another thing my dad would do was to place his hands over his nose and twist it to one side. This would be accompanied by a loud *crack* and him wincing. I was in awe. When i finally found out how to do the nose cracking trick I fooled all my friends who thought i was gross but cool

I used to believe…

my dad used to drive me insane with this: he would stand a few metres away from me, tell me to pick up an invisible ball from the ground and throw it into the bag. I would clearly hear the ball hitting the bag and falling inside. It took me years to work out how it was done but then the magic was all spoiled

I used to believe…

during my first seven years, the window right next to my bed looked out onto our backyard and the railway tracks just beyond our back fence. when the window was raised it exposed a dime-sized hole in the metal screen through which i was terrifed a ghost or a hobo would crawl and "get me".

I used to believe…

My dad convinced me that he saw a mermaid. He told me that she wasn't pretty contrary to popular belief. I told all my friends in school but it was ok because they believed me and one of them even told me she had seen one too.